Deal was named as a 'limb port' of the Cinque Ports in 1278. Due to its position on
the
Downs, the town grew to become for a while the busiest
port in England; today it enjoys the reputation
of being a quiet seaside resort, its
quaint streets and houses the only reminder of its fascinating
history.The coast of France is
approximately twenty-five miles from the town, and is visible on
clear days.

History

Maritime history

The
proximity of Deal's shoreline to the notorious Goodwin Sands has made its coastal waters a source of both
shelter and danger through the history of sea travel in British
waters.The
Downs, the water between the town and the sands, provides
a naturally sheltered anchorage. This
allowed the town to become a significant shipping and military port
in past centuries despite the absence of a harbour, with transit of goods and people from ship
to shore conducted using smaller tender craft. Deal was, for example, visited
by Nelson and
was the first English soil on which James Cook set foot in 1771 on
returning from first
voyage to Australia. The anchorage is still used today by
international and regional shipping, though
on a scale far smaller than at other times in the past (some
historical accounts report hundreds of ships being visible from the
beach).

By the
time Dickens came to Deal it had been largely forgotten how the
government of 1784, under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (who was
staying at nearby Walmer
Castle, and was later to be appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports in 1792), ensured that the Deal boats were all set
ablaze, suspecting some of the Deal luggers
of being engaged in smuggling. Pitt had awaited an
opportunity that January, when the boats were all 'hoved up' on the
beach on account of bad weather, to send a regiment of soldiers to
smash and burn them. A naval cutter
was positioned offshore to prevent any of the boatmen
escaping.

The boatmen's ancestors had the right, under charter, freely to
import goods in return for their services as Cinque Port men in providing what had been long
recognised as the sole naval defence of the realm. These men
continued to risk their lives and their boats, in saving the lives
of shipwreck victims.

The irrepressible spirit of the Deal boatmen remained undaunted by
these events throughout the Napoleonic
Wars, and they continued to assert their hard-earned right to
trade.

From these activities news of the events unfolding in France would
reach England quickly and regularly, with about 400 men making a
living off Deal beach at that time. The war only made the boatmen’s
efforts more profitable, so that afterwards the Government
immediately turned a part of its naval blockade into a coastal blockade, which lasted from
1818 to 1831.

Deal had a naval shipyard which provided Deal with much of its
trade. On the site of the yard there is now a building originally
used as a semaphore tower, and later used as a coastguard house,
then as a timeball tower, which it
remains today, and as a museum. Besides this and the Deal Maritime Museum, there is no
museum of the town's history yet, though a campaign to start one is
ongoing - Deal's history is told at Dover
Museum instead.

Royal Marines

The first
home of the Royal Marines in Kent was
established at Chatham in 1755. Because of its proximity to the
continent and the fact that it possessed a thriving naval dockyard,
Deal has been closely associated with the corps ever since its
foundation. Records from the old Navy yard at Deal exist from 1658
and show that Marines from Chatham and Woolwich were on duty in
Deal, and quartered in the town, until the Deal depot was
established in 1861.

Deal
Barracks has become known over its long history as the Royal Marine
School of Music, the barracks at Walmer consisting
of the North, East and South (or Cavalry) barracks, and all were
constructed shortly after the outbreak of the French
revolution.

Part of the South barracks was used from 1815 as the quarters for
the 'blockade men', drafted against a threat of local smuggling.
The South barracks became a coastguard station thereafter, and this
duty continued until 1840.

It was the East barracks which accommodated the School of Music,
until the Royal Naval School of Music was formed at Plymouth in
1903, but which moved to Deal in 1930, replacing the original depot
band formed in 1891. Thus the institution became known as the Royal
Marine School of Music in 1950.

During 1940, at St. Margaret's Bay, close to Deal, the Royal Marines Siege Regiment
came into being and manned cross-channel guns for most of the
remainder of the war.

On the 29th of October, A Home Security Report detailed in the
RAF's Campaign Diary was made:

"Army Stations 29th October 1940Deal: At 1640 hours three HE bombs
were dropped in the barracks, the casualties being 1 Officer and 7
other ranks killed, 6 Officers and 6 other ranks wounded."

These
casualties are buried in the Hamilton
Road Cemetery, Deal, Kent. Ironically, they rest next to the joint
grave of three Luftwaffe bomber crew who died just fourteen days
later when their aircraft crashed near Kingsdown.

At
approximately 8.20am on the 22nd of September 1989, the Royal
Marines School of Music was bombed by the IRA,
resulting in the death of 11 bandsmen, and injury to 22 other
marines. The memorial garden is situated in the grounds of
the old barracks where the bomb went off. This was built in
remembrance of the 11 that died and was then restored after an
arson attack a number of years ago. Every year the families and
friends of those that died join together at the garden to pay their
respects and lay flowers in a memorial service.

On the
evening of March 26, 1996, the Deal populace were privy to a special
ceremony, the Beating Retreat,
coming from the South barracks, as the Royal Marines Band Service were
commanded to vacate their ancient Kent depot and move to new
quarters at Portsmouth. The Marines every year come up to the
bandstand and put on a display which
attracts well over 4,000 people.

Lifeboats

Piers

The 1957 Deal Pier

The seafront at Deal has been adorned with three separate piers in the town's history. The first, built in 1838,
was designed by Sir John
Rennie. After its wooden structure was destroyed in an 1857
gale, it was replaced by an iron pier in 1864. A popular pleasure
pier, it survived until the Second
World War, when it was struck and severely damaged by a
torpedoed Dutch ship, the Nora, in January 1940. This was
not the first time the pier had been hit by shipping, with previous
impacts in 1873 and 1884 necessitating extensive repairs.

The present pier, designed by Sir W. Halcrow & Partners, was
opened on the 19 November 1957 by the Duke of Edinburgh.
Constructed predominantly from concrete-clad steel, it is
1026ft (311m) in length (a notice announces that it is the same
length as the RMS
Titanic, but that ship was just 882 feet in length), and
ends in a three-tiered pier-head, featuring a cafe, bar, lounge,
and fishing decks. The lowest of the three tiers is
underwater at all but the lowest part of the tidal range, and has
become disused. The pier is a popular sport fishing venue.

Deal's
current pier is the last remaining fully-intact leisure pier in
Kent. Its structure was extensively refurbished
and repaired in 1997, with work including the replacement of much
of the concrete cladding on the pier's main piles. Work began in
April 2008 to construct a new pier-head with a modern restaurant,
with the restaurant opening in December 2008

Museums

Deal has several museums, all are related to Deal's maritime
history. Both Deal Castle and Walmer Castle are operated by English Heritage - Deal has a
display on the events in the reign of Henry VIII that led to the
invasion threat which caused its construction, along with some
material on its subsequent history, whereas displays at Walmer
concentrate on Walmer's post-Tudor role as the Lord Warden's
residence.There is also a ruin of the third Tudor
castle, Sandown
Castle, in North Deal. The Deal Maritime and Local
History Museum has exhibits of boats, smuggler galleys and model naval
ships It also contains extensive histories of the lifeboats as
well as local parish registers. The Timeball Tower Museum, on the other hand,
focuses on the importance of timekeeping for ships, and the role
the building it occupies played.

Notable references

During the 19th century, Charles
Dickens was to comment on the character of the East Kent
boatmen, and on one of his visits to Deal (later used for an
episode in Bleak House) he
wrote:

Earlier descriptions of Deal were much less favourable, with the
town notorious in the 17th century as a location for smugglers.
Daniel Defoe wrote of the town:

Diarist Samuel Pepys recorded several
visits to the town, being moved on 30 April 1660 to describe it as
"pitiful".

In fiction

Dickens, who had visited the town (see Notable References to
Deal), had Richard Carstone garrisoned here in chapter XLV of
Bleak House, so that Woodcourt
and Esther's paths can cross when Woodcourt's ship happens to
anchor in the Downs at the same time as Esther and Ada are visiting
Richard:

In
Jane Austen's Persuasion, chapter 8, the town is
mentioned as the only place where Admiral Croft's wife Sophia Croft
was ever ill, as it was the only place she was ever separated from
him, whilst he was patrolling the North Sea:

A renamed Deal served as the setting for the William Horwood book,
The Boy With No Shoes
(ISBN 0-7553-1318-6). It is also the setting for part of his
earlier novel The Stonor Eagles.

It is also the (renamed) setting of Frances Fyfield's crime
novel Undercurrents (ISBN 0-7515-3028-X).

It is also the setting for David Donachie's book A Hanging
Matter (ISBN 0-330-32862-X) , a murder and nautical
mystery.

North & South Deal were swapped round in the
semi-autobiographical novel The Pier by Rayner Heppenstall.

Deal is mentioned as the destination for a Marine recruit from
Edinburgh in the novel "Guns of Evening" by Ronald Bassett. "What's Deal?" the recruit
replies having never heard of it.

Local media

Newspapers

Deal has two paid for newspapers, the Deal and Sandwich
Express (published by Kent Regional News and Media) and the
East Kent
Mercury (published by the KM
Group. Free newspapers for the town include the Dover
Extra, part of the KM Group; and yourdeal, part of
KOS Media.